Mr. Fairey's works are catchy, but he's no Banksy.
BTW, it shoud be "flouting the rules," not "flaunting." (Riding a skateboard and listening to punk music is typical teen behavior. What rules did he break? Appropriating others' images without attribution and vandalizing property?)
Please -- you mean "flouting," not "flaunting." Flaunt means to exhibit ostentatiously, like wearing an Armani suit to a picnic, while flout means to disregard something openly, such as what Fairey did with the rules.
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Art Bro #1
I appreciate this article, but it fails to mention why so many artists have lostrespect for Fairey: his plagiarism, often from images from developing countries, goes back to some of his earliest images. He has been profiting off of others' work his entire career:
http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm
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Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for sharing.
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Hope is not a strategy. Never was; just an empty platitude to marry to one that purports to be an activist.
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Once again, this fraudulent bore produces not one original image or idea. I'm sure his uneducated followers will love it.
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Oh yeah, and my children thank you profusely for the additional and very needless ozone damage as well.
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Notwithstanding the lies of his past, Shepard Fairey's greatest transgression is his lack of understanding behind the very imagery he appropriates. He does not understand the history of cruelty, despotic rule, and outright mass murder that the images he now calls his own, contributed. Jeffrey Deitch has it exactly wrong. It was never fun or fashion. It is hateful iconography that should've been relegated to the ash heap of history. Instead, something in it resonated with Fairey, a white, advantaged son of a doctor and realtor. Obey, contrary to his claim, was not intended to be ironical, but literal. I recall walking in downtown San Francisco shortly after Obama was elected and seeing an enormous billboard featuring Fairey’s Obama campaign, with Obama’s face, altered in dystopian palette, looking down on the masses, the word OBEY replaced with OBAMA. It was before we knew of the illicit drone strikes, before Snowden, the weaponizing of the IRS, the mass data collection by CIA, the bankrupting of the DNC, the dirty deals with Iran, the selling of uranium, etc. To me, one who studies history, has read McLuhan, and knows a thing or two about the power of the image, I knew instantly, that this was poison. I suspect that the artist has no moral compass, and certainly lacks the wit and heart of artists I'm sure he reveres. But this guy is on the wrong side of history. Many already know this, which is why his work floods the auction market. Predictably, many sellers, no buyers.
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I suppose it falls under "Pick Your Own Poison" that One Who Studies History should resort to parroting the discredited, historically inaccurate list of Obama/Clinton sins against the Right.
Your citation of "The Uranium Deal", in particular, reflects an a-historical, extraordinarily jaundiced eye. Sensitive as you are to every sin and illicit appropriation of Mr. Fairy (there are some), your mauling of this dead horse reveals a singular lack of perception many degrees of ugliness worse.
Especially since you resurrect it from ancient political history in a last gasp, scattershot attempt to gin up outrage among the base. A final hurrah before Trump casts off his bonds and attempts to set Mr. Mueller free.
"The Nuclear Deal" never existed as described, was well begun and well developed before Clinton came on that particular scene, and in any case was beyond her ability to approve or derail. All of which, as a historian, you know. As is the canonical lie: "gave 20% of our nucular material to the Russians".
Leaving one to assume your are nothing more than an art-critical partisan delighted at finding a new venue for your pointless spewing.
Whatever your opinion of Shepard Fairey, it's been buried beneath dogma and your unwillingness to confront reality.
As a student of history, you must recognize what's happening here: corrupt figure-head facing just punishment seeks desperately to arouse his base, tossing off every lie and innuendo at his command. They respond.
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'Listen to the Clash" YES! I love it. And I love Shepard too. His heart is in the right place and his art is in the tradition of the great muralists. He is for the people.
Fairey has long been one of my favorite artist/activists.
Mr. Fairey is to be celebrated as an iconic prosody expression of irony...quite fetching design.... an expression of contrasts
Derivative "art" posing as graffiti. Or is it the other way around?
All right, let me see. Mr. Fairey repurposed (however elegantly) a photographer's image of Barack Obama for his famed "Hope" poster and eventually faced considerable legal problems for his appropriation. His quite successful "OBEY" series of images, signs and apparel is obviously drawn from the similar subliminal billboards featured in John Carpenter's 1988 film, "They Live." This new "Big Brother" work is almost entirely based upon (or directly lifted from) the iconic images of Big Brother seen in the now fairly obscure 1956 feature film of Orwell's "1984."
Mr Fairey is not without talent or skill. But I don't yet see much originality in his work.
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A "good" artist usually has a conflicted relationship with the people and the society in which they work. That response is the evidence that their work has relevance and is touching "nerves". It is only in retrospect that future generations will be able to determine Shepard's relative artistic "importance". His cultural importance is already apparent. It's great to see another RISD success story. Bravo.
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In Mr. Fairey's case, it would seem that, that which makes the artist - breaks the artist. He certainly manages to put himself back together again though. I am thrilled to see a living American Artist thrive by any means or methods in these times. You be you, Shepard.
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This feels much more like a product than art, and there doesn't appear to be much to the work beyond the superficial. Even with an understanding of art history vis a vis pop art, the work contains none of the criticisms of consumer culture but instead seems to be a swan dive into capitalism. In order for visual art to offer a relevant discussion on contemporary life it has to do more than simply regurgitate.
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Shepard is a genius and an inspiration to a generation of street and political artists. He and Banksy continue to be on the leading edge of relevant, progressive art.
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